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Marcia Mikulak
Marcia Mikulak, Ph.D. Anthropologist/Musician October 2020 Dr. Mikulak is accomplished in several fields. First, she is a concert pianist with a Bachelor of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Master of Fine Arts in music performance from Mills College in Oakland, California. She has a number of solo piano recordings to her credit. Prior to her Ph.D. (awarded in 2002), Dr. Mikulak created and directed Santa Fe Research, an organization dedicated to the investigation of learning and potential in children, examining ways in which children diagnosed with learning disabilities could reach their unique potentials. This work has been cross-culturally informed and supported by private grants and fellowships, with research in Zimbabwe and Mali, Africa on the cultures of ‘childhoods.’ In addition, Dr. Mikulak pioneered American Contemporary and Avant Guard music in San Francisco Bay Area and in Santa Fe, NM in the 1980s with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts through a program titled Explorations in Music that continued for seventeen years. Notable composers presented their work through this venue and their work inspired local musicians and artists throughout the years. It is her concern with children that eventually moved her from music to anthropology. In the fall of 2002 Dr. Mikulak received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. Her doctoral research began in Rio de Janeiro in 1998 and was supported by a Tinker Foundation grant, research grants from the Latin American Studies Institute, a Challenge Grant, The Frieda Butler Lectureship Award, and other grants from UNM, a grant from Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Committee, and the Johann Jacobs Foundation Young Investigator Grant in Switzerland. Her doctoral fieldwork in Minas Gerais, Brazil with street and working children incorporated innovative musical projects that included the design and construction of experimental musical instruments, improvisational techniques, theater, and story telling. She has been a Brazil country specialist with Amnesty International since 2007 and is currently a Brazil consultant for Amnesty International. Dr. Mikulak has extensive research experience in sexual assault and domestic violence. In 2002 she worked with New Mexico Department of Health, Injury Prevention, and Emergency Medical Services Bureau on the first state-wide assessment on violence against women in the state of New Mexico and co-author the final qualitative report. She has worked closely with diabetes training programs for Native Americans across the United states, based on traditional Native American healthy lifestyles, and teen tobacco use among Hispanic, Mexican American, and Native American youth in Albuquerque, New Mexico for the Center for Disease Control. He long time research with the Xukuru Nation in Pernambuco, Brazil has assisted in achieving a landmark human rights case won in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), finding the Brazilian government in violation of inter-continental human rights agreements. Dr. Mikulak has several publications, her most recent is her book titled “Childhood Unmasked: The Agency of Brazil’s Street and Working Children published in 2015 with Cognella Academic Publishing. She is currently Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of North Dakota in the Department of Anthropology.
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